Can't Transcode FLACs

[thread]

I've been struggling with this for a while, and finally decided to just ask the forum.

When I try to play FLAC files in the web interface, they simply never start playing. The log says something like this:

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[2010-07-07 08:14:25,449] DEBUG TranscodeInputStream - Starting transcoder: [/home/mythtv/apps/subsonic/transcode/lame] [-S] [-h] [-b] [192] [/storage/music/DJ Beats/DJ Spooky/DJ Spooky vs. the frieght elevator quartet - File Under Futurism (FLAC)/08 - Experimental Asyncronicity.flac] [-]

That's all that happens.

On my phone, I get an error dialog:

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Error playing "Name of my Song".

Prepare failed.: status=0x1 (IOException)

I followed the troubleshooting advice over here... I have my flac and lame executables symlinked within the $SUBSONIC_HOME's transcode folder. This is linux, by the way.

I've totally had this working in the past, but I guess since I upgraded the Subsonic server some weeks ago, it broke.

Any thoughts? Anything more I could add?

Thanks very much in advance!

[Poffa]

Hi

Try to copy lame and flac executables to your subsonic/transcode folder. I had a similiar problem with symlinks.

[thread]

Thank you for the response, Poffa!

Unfortunately, that didn't seem to help. I get the exact same result with actual files instead of symlinks.

[delcypher]

Could you please post your transcoder settings for "flac > mp3" (In the web interface under Settings>Transcoders)

These default for "flac > mp3" actually uses ffmpeg (not the flac tool) for decoding the FLAC file to wav then passes that on to Lame. The flac tool will be useless if you don't tell subsonic to use it.

I haven't finished the list yet. Put I've posted a list of transcoder configurations on the wiki.
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/subsonic/index.php?title=Transcoders

[thread]

Right, good point!

I just went looking for the line I needed, but came up short. I'm surprised this tweak is so well hidden.

I actually just added ffmpeg to my transcode directory, and the default command does work for me now!... Is there some reason I should use the flac tool over ffmpeg?

I suppose if we've come this far, you may as well and just let us know what the flac version of the command would look for...

I have:

flac > mp3:
Step 1: ffmpeg -i %s -f wav -
Step 2: lame -b %b - -

Thanks!

[delcypher]

I don't know of any good reason to use flac over ffmpeg for conversion. I expect they use the same implementation.

It is on the wiki but if you did want to use flac instead of ffmpeg for converting "flac > mp3" then you would want.

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#step 1
flac --decode --stdout %s
#step 2
lame -b %b - -


For a basic configuration. Look at flac's and lame's manual pages for more info on what you can do with them.

[thread]

Thanks again, delcypher. I really appreciate you clearing this up for me!